Katherine earned her Ph.D. Algebraic Geometry at The University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and has been a professor of Mathematics at CSUN since 2001. From Fall 2009 to Summer 2018, she was Director of Developmental Math where she oversaw courses for 2500-3000 freshmen. She is active in redesigning high failure rate, multi-section math courses at CSUN and across the CSU. She received the CSUN outstanding teaching award in 2008 and the College of Science and Math outstanding service award in 2015.

Outside of CSUN, Katherine is the chair of the American Mathematical Society's Committee on Education and she sits on the Education Advisory Board of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute on UC Berkeley's campus.

‍